Oh man, I have a treat for you guys.
Yesterday, my sister found a bunch of pictures from about 6-7 years ago and decided to plaster them all over her Facebook page.

She’s cool like that.

Back in the day, I used to play with my hair a lot, mainly dying it every color under the sun. If you’ve seen any recent pictures of me, you’ll know that my natural hair color is dark brown. I haven’t dyed it in years, but once upon a time my hair was bleach blonde. It got so dry and damaged from the constant dye jobs that is literally started breaking off, so I decided to get ballsy and did a boy short haircut. People that know me now find it hard to believe my hair was ever that short. But now, there’s proof!!

LOOK! SHORT!!!

The dog in the picture is my old dog Lindy, the best dog ever.

Tags: photos

Two years ago, Dave asked me to be his girlfriend. I have never been happier.

Tags: photos

One of my goals for 2010 was to better stick to a budget. Right before 2009 ended, I made up a monthly budget plan to stick to. I included all my bills and gave myself a certain monthly allowance for different categories. By writing things down, I instantly became more aware of how much money I was spending on things and what I could do to cut back. Setting limits every month and writing things down helped me tremendously and I would suggest this to anyone trying to stay on a strict budget.

Last month, I went over my budget in the three categories that I have a feeling will be a continuous struggle for me: gas, food and entertainment. At the end of December, I decided $100/month for gas would probably be a good amount, but then gas went up in price around $.25/gallon here. Although it is starting to go down in price slightly, I’m going to start budgeting $120/month now.

Entertainment was way over this month because I promised my friends son I would take him to the Monster Truck show that was last weekend. The look on his face was definitely worth spending the extra money.

Going over on the food budget was all my fault entirely. I got lazy the last week of the month and didn’t feel like going grocery shopping, so I went out for lunch instead of bringing it to work like I usually do. In just that one week, I went way over budget. It just goes to show you how much you can really save by bringing your lunch with you to work instead of going out to eat. This month, I am going to make sure that there is enough food in the house for the entire month so I always have something to bring with me.

I hope to stay better on track this month. We’ll see how it goes.

Tags: budget

At work, we share our break room with a group of real estate agents in the office next door. I generally bring my lunch to work, so almost always, I am sharing my lunch break with someone from their office.

There’s this guy over on their side that usually takes his lunch around the same time as I do. From the few brief conversations I’ve had with him he seems like a cool guy. His New Years resolution, just like most people, was to lose some weight, so he’s been bringing healthy foods like salads, fruits and vegetables to work everyday.

Until last week, he’s been obeying all of the rules of break room etiquette. You know the rules: clean the microwave, don’t leave the coffee pot empty, do your dishes. We need to add another rule to this list-don’t cook fish in the microwave. In fact, I think it should be the number one rule, even over doing your dishes.

I guess he added fish to his diet, and for the past 2 weeks he has cooked it in the microwave almost everyday. Since the only thing that separates our offices is the break room, the smell travels throughout our entire office building. Smelling microwaved fish for half the day doesn’t make for a pleasant work environment. We’ve tried to battle the smell with air fresheners and plug ins, but the fish is strong, so it ends up just smelling like vanilla fish.

Dude, I’m not trying to be an asshole, but seriously, please stop cooking fish in the microwave. You are breaking all the rules.

Tags: daily

Last week, I experienced such a huge personal victory that I can’t even believe I forgot to mention it.

Dave and I have been going to the gym for a few months now. Ya know, trying to get in shape and all. I’m far from in shape, even though my parents are health nut, personal trainers. We’d been going to the gym and average of 3x a week, just doing cardio and some light weight training. One night, as we were checking in, I happened to look at the class schedule and noticed that yoga was starting in 10 minutes. I jumped the gun and decided I would give it a shot.

I had really no clue what was going through my head. I had never taken a yoga class in my whole life. The only thing I knew about it was that Madonna did it and she could turn herself into a pretzel. But I’m half of Madonna’s age, so surely I could do this!  I walked into the class, took off my socks and shoes and grabbed a mat. And 10 minutes later I began the most difficult work out of my life.

Yoga is no walk in the park, and that first night was not a beginners class. The instructor had us walking our legs up the wall and was demonstrating poses I didn’t think a human body could get into. My shoulders were sore, my legs were shaking, but it felt great at the same time. It wasn’t like running on a treadmill or doing 45 minutes on the elipitical. It was the huge challenge that I was looking for.

The classes were Monday and Wednesday nights at 7:45 and I decided after that first class that I would continue to go on a regular basis. I asked for yoga gear for Christmas and received some yoga pants and mats. I felt like I was improving slightly each class. My balance was definitely getting better and I could do most of the poses fairly well.

Last week, at the end of class, I was packing up my mats and putting my shoes back on when my yoga instructor came up to me. She said she noticed that I was coming a lot and wanted to say that she could really see an improvement.

!!!

I’ve never considered myself exceptionally good at anything, especially when it came to fitness, so hearing this was exactly what I needed. Ever since then, I’ve been trying even harder to improve. I’ve never been more excited to go work out. This is coming from a person who sits at the computer for hours playing The Sims 3.

Sometimes, it’s just those simple acknowledgements that get your butt into gear…not that I was thinking of quitting or anything, but now I’m more motivated than ever to continue and get really good at this. I doubt you’ll read this Heidi, but thanks for all that you have done!

Tags: fitness, motivation, yoga

Dave’s old college friend Frank was in town this week to visit, so last night we headed to a beer bar up the street to hang out for a few hours. I invited my friend Bob to go with us too since I haven’t seen him in a few months and he’s in love with the place that we were going to.

We’re all sitting at the bar, drinking pints of  imported microbrews. Dave and Frank are talking about people they used to hang out with in college. “So and so is working here now, Did you know that he is going to be a Dad? Remember that one place we used to go to all the time?”

Bob and I start reminiscing about the days I like to refer to as “a 3 year blur”. For all of us, so much has changed. The crew we once all hung out with pretty much broke up.  I graduated, got a career, met Dave and realized I was in my mid 20’s and it was probably time to stop acting like a college kid. Bob met Kat, started really having to work, and just recently got married and became a stepdad. Our entire lives did a complete 180. We have things we care about now, people to take care of, bills to pay. We’re spending our extra money on furniture and appliances instead of on a 6 pack. Holy shit, we’re adults now.

There was a lot of “Remember the one time…” and “OMG, do you remember when we all went to…” and “God, that chick was crazy…” I will never forget those days. We did things we probably shouldn’t have. We said things that were probably out of line. In the end all of us went on different paths. I suppose it’s what happens when you grow up. You have less in common with some of the people you used to see everyday. You start seeing them less and less until eventually you just don’t see them at all. The people that stay around become your “real friends” and not just “those crazy people you used to hang out with back in the day”. I have a few of those people and it’s always great to get together every now and then and talk about the good ol’ days. Things have changed, we’ve grown up and we’ve gotten more responsibilities, but we’ll always have those crazy memories to share.

Tags: adulthood, friends, life

Tonight I went to my sisters house. I ate way too much of her homemade lasagna and watched Jersey Shore for the first time. I’m not really proud of either, but at least the lasagna was good.

Tags: daily

I just got off the phone with my Mom. We’ve (mostly her) have been dealing with this fiasco all week over a stupid typo. A little back story; Before I moved in with Dave, I lived in a condo that my parents owned. I paid them rent and they were my landlord. A few weeks after I moved out, a lady moved in (The real estate agent my parents use is really good at her job.) Since everything happened so fast, my Mom just had her switch over the utility and electric bills from my name to her name. It was just the simplest way to do it, or so we thought.

Yesterday I got a recorded message from my old electric company, which I found odd considering I don’t live there anymore and all. I called my Mom to ask her what was up and she tells me about this huge fiasco that she has been dealing with for days. Apparently, the real estate agent is really good at selling, but not so much at typing. She made a typo on the address on the lease, putting 7516 instead of 7616. And I guess the current tenant of the condo isn’t good at reading, because she didn’t realize the address was wrong on the lease and went to switch all of her bills over with the wrong address. She was paying the bills for the house down the street instead of the one she lived in. So she gets a letter in the mail saying she needs to pay her electric bill soon or it will be shut off. And before you ask why she didn’t get the original bill in the mail, she wouldn’t have because I was signed up for paperless statements. I paid all of my bills online, and since the bill was still in my name, she didn’t get it anything until she was late with payment. So she’s all confused and calls my Mom. They figure out what has happened and the tenant agrees to call back during business hours to get things straightened out.

If I haven’t said it before, I absolutely hate my old electric company. Not only are they the only company in the area that raised their rates astronomically, they are the most incompetent pricks ever. The tenant calls to get things straightened out, and instead of changing the mistake, they shut off the electric at the guys house at 7516. He is understandably pissed off and calls the tenant and the real estate agent bitching. The tenant calls the electric company again to say they made a mistake and they try to charge her $20 to get the bill switched over to her name and get this guys electric back on. When they made the mistake. NICE.

Hopefully all this crap gets straightened out tomorrow and the tenant at my old place and the one at 7516 can sit down with a beer share a good laugh. Moral of this story: proofread!

Tags: daily

“Oh, I’m sorry…did you need me to move??”

Tags: dali, photos

This is an old picture of my friend Tom and I on Clearwater Beach. It was taken about 4 years ago, right around the beginning of January. Going to the beach in January is a normal activity for a person living in Florida, but this week, it has been so cold out that I had to wait for the ice on my car to thaw out before going to work this morning. There’s even rumors that it might *gasp* snow in Tampa this weekend. So when I got a text message on Monday saying that Tom was coming down from Philly to help his friend move this week, I automatically blamed him for bringing this bone chilling weather.